Going forward, I will face several style-related decisions. To guide my decision-making process I have prepared some basic principles. First, I want to ensure the content correctly represents the nature of tourism and balances the positive and negative aspects. Second, I want to ensure that the style of photography and subject matter are complementary and in synch. Third, I want ensure there is an emotional balance and avoid the prevalence of despair in many of today’s documentary works.
Applying these principles comes down to some very practical choices, the first being choice of lens. The second is on the role of aesthetics (beauty). I highlight these choices as each confronts current practice.
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The choice of lens, of course, can materially impact how an image of a subject looks, or in other words, a lens can impart an image that fairly represents the subject or a distorted one. While I often find the distortions appealing, I recognise they infringe upon the veracity [of representation of subject] tenet of the documentary style. Yet, for my project, distortion is an important characteristic of the subject and thus it needs to be represented and that needs to be rationalised. My first assertion is that our view of things is subjective, often distorted, may be by physical things, such as sunglasses, or our education or how we feel that day. This is especially true of the tourist gaze prejudiced by the pleasure dome of travel. Second, the sites frequently visited by the tourist are not always what they appear to be; they might be a re-creation, for example, and thus they themselves are a distortion.
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The role of beauty in documentary photography is a little tricker to deal with, in part because what is considered beautiful is very subjective. However, I need to address its use as it too is felt to detract from the veracity of the documentary image. The traditional documentary photographers, Atget, Strand, Evans, Lange, the Bechers, used a style of photography that was often very structured and formalised, sometimes referred to as Straight Photography, a style that tried to capture “what they saw”. While the subject matter may have reflected hardship, it was often muted by the matter-of-fact style. Arbus, Golden, and more recent works from Gary Briechle, Matthew Genitempo, Masaki Yamamoto have taken on a more realistic representation, one I find is often more cynical, that lays bare the “facts”. But what unifies all these is a sense weighted towards despair.
The works of Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky are often presented in a very large format, almost wall-sized photographs. Many show intriguing detail and often poetic patterns of lines, circles, and other shapes. Yet his photography has been criticised for these qualities; a lack of “edge”. But with his approach he is able to combine qualities that convey both sides of the story. As evidence, his image of an Alberta Oil Field is said to hang in both the boardrooms of oil companies and the offices of environmentalists. Each group is able to see their point of view in the image. The oil companies see the beauty, the environmentalists see the despair.
Commenting that beauty is what distinguishes art, American photographer Robert Adams stated “[b]eauty implies hope”. Hope is the converse of despair. So while on the one hand the documentary style shuns beauty, tourism has a large element that is about beauty and hope. Tourist sites are often manufactured to enhance their natural characteristics; to enhance their attraction, or should I say their beauty. Yet underlying this verisimilitude lies the stark reality of unfulfilled promises. For me this implies an approach situated at the intersection of documentary and poetic styles.
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